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2010-07-08 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Los Angeles campground closed due to plague outbreak among squirrels
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Posted by gromky 2010-07-08 00:58|| || Front Page|| [11128 views ]  Top

#1 Rodents shouldn't play with matches.
Posted by Black Bart Shick7973 2010-07-08 07:17||   2010-07-08 07:17|| Front Page Top

#2 Any recent movement of Syrian army units into the LA campground?
Posted by Glenmore 2010-07-08 07:42||   2010-07-08 07:42|| Front Page Top

#3 One of the unofficial mottoes of New Mexico is 'Home of the flea, Land of the Plague'. Several local cases a year. It's endemic to the place. Outside of urban areas, wear long pants. Unfortunately neighboring states' medicos are not attune to the symptoms as the locals are. As a consequence they shuffle off dying patients to NM in a too late attempt to save them and the state gets stuck with the statistical death.
Posted by Procopius2k 2010-07-08 08:08||   2010-07-08 08:08|| Front Page Top

#4 The campground will remain closed while animal experts comb the forest and dust squirrel burrows with flea killer, as it is actually the insects that transmit the disease not the squirrels themselves.

Oh, and you don't kill the squirrels to start with because the fleas will then seek out other hosts immediately. Like humans. First you reduce the population of fleas, then the population of the tree rats.
Posted by Procopius2k 2010-07-08 08:13||   2010-07-08 08:13|| Front Page Top

#5 My Dad - the research biologist - told us years ago on our nature walks in the hills of SoCal around the edge of the Angeles National Forest, that we shouldn't go poking around in ground squirrel nests because of this danger ... so I am having trouble figuring out why this is news all of a sudden. Have they already dialed up the panic on every other possible way to scare the ever-loving c**p out of the audience and have to fall back on this?
Posted by Sgt.Mom  2010-07-08 08:59|| http://www.celiahayes.com  2010-07-08 08:59|| Front Page Top

#6 Have they already dialed up the panic on every other possible way to scare the ever-loving c**p out of the audience

Yup, you just described the MSM in a nutshell.
Posted by Redneck Jim 2010-07-08 09:20||   2010-07-08 09:20|| Front Page Top

#7 Good point Mom, but the only person who seems to be scared is the journalist ...
Posted by Steve White 2010-07-08 09:22||   2010-07-08 09:22|| Front Page Top

#8 I suspect the local health authorities have a pattern of screening for plague among the local critters, then step up suppression efforts when an animal is noted to be positive. Since early treatment of a patient is critical for their survival, news like this is important to heighten suspicion among caregivers / diagnosticians to think of plague as a cause of sudden illness. Campers who may have been exposed to plague near LA may already be back home in Iowa or Vermont. Remember the postal worker in DC who died of anthrax even after he had diagnosed himself? His concerns were ignored by his caregiver(s) even though there was extensive media coverage of that issue.
Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-07-08 10:59||   2010-07-08 10:59|| Front Page Top

#9 has been closed and will remain so for a lease eight days.

Someone needs to pick up a copy of "How To Write Good".
Posted by SteveS 2010-07-08 11:18||   2010-07-08 11:18|| Front Page Top

#10 RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!

Zombie squirrels... OMG!!!! Zombie squirrels ...AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH

Oh, ha ha, bubonic plague...

Never mind.
Posted by Adriane 2010-07-08 11:31||   2010-07-08 11:31|| Front Page Top

#11 The campground will remain closed while animal experts comb the forest...

I have a cat. She is smart, but I am not sure that I can make her an expert in anything except her natural proclivity to scare meeces so that they consistently drop due to hearth attack.

Maybe using experts that are human may bring better result?
Posted by twobyfour 2010-07-08 12:05||   2010-07-08 12:05|| Front Page Top

#12 If you ever come across an area of prairie dog or ground squirrel burrows with spider webs across the openings, get the hell out of there. That is generally your first indication that plague has spread through that population. The animals are dead in their burrows and fleas in the area are looking for new hosts.

This would include pretty much the entire western US including most of California.
Posted by crosspatch 2010-07-08 12:24||   2010-07-08 12:24|| Front Page Top

#13 The animals are dead in their burrows and fleas in the area are looking for new hosts.

And so ends another day inside the capital beltway.
Posted by Besoeker 2010-07-08 12:34||   2010-07-08 12:34|| Front Page Top

#14 I have a cat. She is smart, but I am not sure that I can make her an expert in anything except her natural proclivity to scare meeces so that they consistently drop due to hearth attack

I had a cat who wouldn't kill them.
She'd bring them to me, guess she thought I was her Very Big Baby Kitten, she'd also "Fetch" only cat I ever heard of who would.
Posted by Redneck Jim 2010-07-08 12:44||   2010-07-08 12:44|| Front Page Top

#15 We could hire unemployed census workers to chase squirrels around the park with bags of 7-Dust.
That would get the economy going again!
Posted by bigjim-CA 2010-07-08 14:44||   2010-07-08 14:44|| Front Page Top

#16  she'd also "Fetch" only cat I ever heard of who would.

My two cats would fetch, Redneck Jim. They quickly learnt that if they wanted me to throw things for them to chase, they had to bring them back to me. And yes, your cat probably did have moments of despair because you were so retarded about learning to hunt properly. ;-)
Posted by trailing wife 2010-07-08 16:30||   2010-07-08 16:30|| Front Page Top

#17 Ahh, The Plague, my favorite period!
Posted by BeetleJuice 2010-07-08 18:46||   2010-07-08 18:46|| Front Page Top

#18 Damn guys, I live in the Angeles National Forest, near Millard campground (a few miles away) and I didn't even know about this.
I guess it pays to read Rantburg!!
Posted by Mike hunt 2010-07-08 21:55||   2010-07-08 21:55|| Front Page Top

#19 "California’s governor and its Democrat-led Legislature are at odds over how to close a $19.1 billion deficit for the fiscal year that began July 1st - oh look, a squirrel!"

/journalist
Posted by Pappy 2010-07-08 22:15||   2010-07-08 22:15|| Front Page Top

#20 Not just a squirrel...a plague squirrel!
Posted by tu3031 2010-07-08 23:45||   2010-07-08 23:45|| Front Page Top

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